November 25, 2016

Thanks, Comrade!

Thank you, indeed (via The Rancid Honeytrap). I have a few comments to add to that immensely enjoyable post. Not only does it justly mock and humiliate intellectually and morally bankrupt liberals who offer ludicrous and self-contradictory arguments, but it also makes several points of critical importance.

For example, this:

Now I do want to remind you that the alleged rig was done via hacking, liberation and dissemination of actual, true information about the clownishly disingenuous, war criminal Hillary Clinton. Nobody serious is actually talking about the direct hacking by Russia of the actual voting machines, just of unjust influence via enlightenment upon the lowly scum we allow into a small, usually meaningless part of our political process.

The flood of “fake news” this election season got support from a sophisticated Russian propaganda campaign that created and spread misleading articles online with the goal of punishing Democrat Hillary Clinton, helping Republican Donald Trump and undermining faith in American democracy, say independent researchers who tracked the operation.

A few paragraphs on, the article states:

There is no way to know whether the Russian campaign proved decisive in electing Trump, but researchers portray it as part of a broadly effective strategy of sowing distrust in U.S. democracy and its leaders. The tactics included penetrating the computers of election officials in several states and releasing troves of hacked emails that embarrassed Clinton in the final months of her campaign.

Got that? The "hacked emails that embarrassed Clinton" were an integral part of a fake news campaign.

Any semiconscious observer knows, because we've seen this game played countless times before, that if the hacked emails had embarrassed Trump, the Post and all the whiny liberals would have leapt on them with the bloodthirsty savagery of a starving man attacking his first meal in a month. Similarly, because we are nothing if not evenhanded and just in our observations, we know that all those who were thrilled to exploit the hacked emails to make the case against Clinton -- which group was comprised primarily of conservatives and their fellow travelers -- are precisely those people who offered the most brutal criticisms of "traitorous Wikileaks" when that organization first appeared on the scene. At that point in distant history, the leaks embarrassed the Death State also known as the United States government, and they particularly embarrassed the military in connection with the U.S.'s nonstop campaign of criminal and murderous international aggression.

I assume it must be distant history since it appears that everyone, and most particularly those who mercilessly attacked Wikileaks several years ago, has failed to grasp that the views of Wikileaks have been reversed in this latest episode. We can therefore conclude with full confidence that neither the liberals nor the conservatives hold their positions vis-a-vis Wikileaks on the basis of any kind of principle. How old-fashioned and quaint such a concern would be. Can a principle fix your broken leg? No. Will a principle buy you dinner? Of course not. Will a principle help the candidate you prefer get elected? No siree.

In other words, and to speak in broad terms: liberals and conservatives frequently adopt positions primarily, and sometimes solely, for the perceived partisan advantage those positions confer. Logic, consistency and facts, along with highfalutin concepts such as justice, are discarded entirely. This is one of the basest and most contemptible results of primitive political tribalism. You can read much more about that here. With regard to the ease with which liberals and conservatives will adopt the position of the "other side" when doing so is to their momentary advantage, particularly note this statement from that post: "The basic dynamics of all tribes are the same."

I must offer a brief comment about a real howler in the second paragraph of the Post story:

Russia’s increasingly sophisticated propaganda machinery — including thousands of botnets, teams of paid human “trolls,” and networks of websites and social-media accounts — echoed and amplified right-wing sites across the Internet as they portrayed Clinton as a criminal hiding potentially fatal health problems and preparing to hand control of the nation to a shadowy cabal of global financiers. The effort also sought to heighten the appearance of international tensions and promote fear of looming hostilities with nuclear-armed Russia.

No one -- and I mean no one -- did more "to heighten the appearance of international tensions and promote fear of looming hostilities with nuclear-armed Russia" than Hillary Clinton herself. After the second Clinton-Trump debate, I commented to some friends that it was genuinely unnerving to witness the degree to which Clinton was jonesing for war with Russia. She conveyed her insatiable longing for military confrontation on numerous occasions throughout the campaign. She reminded me of this: "My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes."

Reagan said that as a joke, and he didn't, you know, actually do it. But I pay Hillary Clinton the compliment of believing that she means what she says. Clinton's longstanding love affair with visiting death and destruction on helpless populations around the globe is one of the more sickening symptoms of the evil that suffuses the U.S. government at the highest levels.

In this context, Sassy's most urgent and compelling point comes in the next to last paragraph of the post:

But I just want to say this loud and clear right now. If Vladimir Putin and Russia had anything at all to do with the successful rigging — the actual hacking of the vote tallies — of the elections of this rotten, disgusting country, nothing short of tripping over a big currency war-devalued sack of rubles would make me happier. Nothing. If for once someone hit back at the United States successfully, I as an anti-imperialist must only cheer, and that’s even if it were just in a vindictive, destructive fashion. But if Putin were worried, as many were, that Clinton would go to war with Russia starting in Syria, then Russians AND AMERICANS owe a huge debt of gratitude to this great leader of men. He has not only kicked the empire in the nuts, he has potentially saved his people, and us, from a disastrous conflict. Not to mention the crossfire that would certainly be primarily borne by the tortured citizens of the Middle East.

I want to add one final point. Besides the flood of State propaganda that flows from all the major news organizations -- see my recent post for a detailed discussion of how these news organizations function as devoted adjuncts of the State -- the United States has one further card to play. In fact, the U.S. has been playing it for decades. And the U.S. doesn't hide it. To the contrary, the U.S. government proudly boasts of its actions and views its actions as entirely honorable. Because our enemies are just that bad.

I'm speaking, of course, of the Voice of America. I offer the opening of Wikipedia's entry because these particular facts are well-known and beyond dispute (numerous internal links omitted; consult the original for the sources listed in the footnotes):

Voice of America (VOA) is a United States government-funded multimedia news source and the official external broadcasting institution of the United States.[1] VOA provides programming for broadcast on radio, television, and the Internet outside of the U.S., in English and some foreign languages. The VOA charter—signed into law in 1976 by President Gerald Ford—requires VOA to "serve as a consistently reliable and authoritative source of news" and "be accurate, objective and comprehensive."[2]

The Voice of America headquarters is located at 330 Independence Avenue SW, Washington, D.C., 20237. The VOA is fully funded by the U.S. government; the Congress appropriates funds for it annually under the same budget for embassies and consulates.

VOA radio and television broadcasts are distributed by satellite, cable and on FM, AM, and shortwave radio frequencies. They are streamed on individual language service websites, social media sites and mobile platforms. VOA has affiliate and contract agreements with radio and television stations and cable networks worldwide.

Some scholars and commentators consider Voice of America to be a form of propaganda, although this label is disputed by others.[3][4]

With this track record -- and this is merely what is disclosed publicly and completely omits similar covert efforts (just as it omits the vital role of "news organizations" such as the Post and the NYT that carry government propaganda day after day) -- it's absolutely hilarious that, in this brouhaha, the U.S. government and a tawdry collection of cognitively impaired liberals mightily puff themselves up in phony moral outrage (now there's something that is undeniably fake). There isn't a thing about "fake news" that the U.S. government doesn't know. Not only does it spend a bloody fortune on it, but it forcibly takes the required funds from its citizens to pay for the "fake news" it disseminates. Ah, freedom! (I will not insult readers' intelligence by examining the claim that the VOA shall "serve as a consistently reliable and authoritative source of news" and "be accurate, objective and comprehensive." I assume you no longer believe that Santa Claus will personally deliver your presents this Christmas. Finis.)

This is one of the more ridiculous controversies of the moment. Desperate times make many people remarkably stupid. At least it has its amusing aspects. So I'll add: Thanks for the laughs, Comrade.